Listen & Write >> Improve listening skills through audios and videos

LISTEN & WRITE

This website is specially designed  to help learners to improve their listening capabilities of the English language through the help of  some multimedias. In simple, it basically provides a free system that provides thousands of videos and audios for us to choose throughout our learning process. Plus, some of the audios provided are related from the latest news all around the world. So learners would not only be polishing their listening skills but also increasing thier knowledge about what is happening around the world. It also comes with different levels of difficulity (lvl 2-26) which could accommodate various level of secondary school students age 13 to 17 years old.

In order to start the activity, learners should begin by selecting the level they want to challenge themselves with and choose a topic that interest them from the news options available in that level.

Then, they need to select which mode that they prefer to do in the process.

After that, learners can start listening and try to dictate as many words as possible untill all the words are correct. Interestingly, the listening part is devided into several parts and we can choose to listen to the content as many times as we want untill all the words are correct.There is also a hint button to help use in certain time or we could easily change to different mode according to our learning rate.

Using audio only:

Why this website is very reliable for teachers or students to use:

• Apart from being completely free, this websites offers a lot of topics for the learners to choose from starting from the latest news updates or even to the knowledgble one. This will somehow generate the students interest to polish thier own skill by choosing a topic that they like.
• It also promote students to become autonomous where it is an activity that engage students to continue in their learning process and improving thier skills without any help from the teachers or anyone else.
• In fact, by listening to the speakers, students could be more familiar with different accents by different people and also learn on how to pronounce certain words correctly.
• Visual aid also provide some kind of support for the learners while they are listening by making it more real and fun to do.

Some of the limitations while using this website:

• only suitable for working individuality and not as a group. May be difficult for schools who have limited access to computers or even the internet.
• Some of the clips are easy although it is categorized as some of the difficult ones.
• students might be unfamiliar with some of the speakers's accent

Fancy trying it for yourself?? click HERE!

Lyrics Training > where listening becomes more alive

Listening skill is one of the important features that is a must for language learners to have a complete understanding of the target language. This is why I would like to reccomend  this site called the LYRICS TRAINING that makes listening activities one step ahead of traditional learning full with fun and excitement.
It is an easy and fun method to learn and improve your foreign languages skills through  music videos and lyrics of your favorite songs.

So basically, lyrics training is a website that allows us to listen to thousands of songs along with the lyrics available in the internet as a way to improve our listening skills. In simple, the listeners need to complete the lyrics as they are listening to the songs. Although it may sounds and look as normal as what the teachers normally used with the students in class, Lyrics Training is more to a modern way of practising listening skills with some extra new features that excites people in doing it. Furthermore, the best part of this activity is that it is specially made to accomodate  different level of learners in terms of listening abilities where learners could choose wheather they want it to be suitable for beginners, intermediate or even expert. The more advance level you choose the more complicated it will get.

It is an easy tool where we could start practising our listening skills by just picking on one song and the level that we wish to test ourselves. Amazingly, the most cool part in this website is that the music will stop from one line to the other one as we type in the missing words. We could also listen to the same line again and again if we missed any part of it.  Moreover, the most interesting thing in this activity is that you will get a score at the end of the song depending on the time you get to finish with the task and you could even compare yourselves with users from different countries. How great is that!!!

**Some things that I like about this site are:

• It's free, so we could use it as many times as we want.
• Full with up to date songs to choose from where it could boost up the students interest to keep on testing their listening abilities using songs that they like.
• Fun and motivate learners to learn by themselves at home without any teacher guidelines.
• It also provides score in the end as a type of feedback for the learners to keep challeging themselves and improve thier current ability.
• This activity does not only concern about the learners listening ability but also thier spelling capabilities of writing the correct words.
• Students will also get to learn new vocabularies and  how to pronounce words correctly as it should.

**Some things that I don't like about this site are:

•  Some of the videoclips may not be suitable to be shown in class as it might offend certain people.
• Students might be out of control and choose inappropriate songs unsuitable for their age.
• The learners might not be able to predict words that they have never heard before such as slangs or dialects that the singers used.
• Certain schools might have limited computers and internet acces. 

That's all I have to say for this site but personally, I would like everyone to try it for yourself by clicking HERE and experience this new form of excitement of making learning language more fun and alive!!!

Dvolver

Fancy becoming a director? Eager to create your own short clips? Tired of writing boring stuff? Worry not..DVOLVER has the answer to all of it.

DVOLVER is a new technology that could make learning English more creative and fun for the students and even for the teachers to use it in class.It is a website Which encourage students to come out with a cartoon comic strip type movie online using pre-made graphics.The sites is so easy to use,free and suitable for beginners of lower secondary students aged 12-15 years old. In fact, with just a few minutes familiarizing with the website, students can easily start their own short creative production using different context, storylines and crazy ideas!! Just how much fun is that. The best part is students will not only think on how to make their clips interesting but also need to think hard on how to make use the language comprehensible to the readers.


Here's a sample that we can make through DVOLVER..or you can click HERE to try it for youself.





Although Dvolver has some of the main interesting features that could make learning becomes more fun and addictive, it does have its own drawbacks especially when it comes with technology.

The advantages:

• I find the websites amusing as it promotes the students to become more creative by making thier own stories as they desire through pre-made graphics available.
• Students will also engage with real life communication as they need to carefully compose the right language used with the right context.
• Plus, the website itself is load with different characters, musics, and scenaries available for the learners to choose from making the results more interesting and fun to do in class.
• It could also encaurage the  students to become autonomous as the students could make use of the website at home and experiment with the language more freely and countinuosly.
• Surprisingly, the most important thing Dvolver has to offer is that the website is completely FREE and anyone could use it till their hearts content.

The drawbacks:

• The number of words that is allowed in the dialogue are limited to 100 words. Thus, this will restrict the students capability of using the language freely.
• Too much freedom would make the students to be out of control and use inappropriate language in thier work.
• Some of the schools or even the students' home will not have the access to the internet and this will make learning through Dvolver unaccessible.
• Students are not able to edit thier own product and need to start all over again in order to make new corrections. 
• The learners creativity are restricted as they can only use the characters, musics, and background that is pre-made for them to use without having the opportunity to create one of thier own.